Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
JOHN BURROUGHSTo be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
More John Burroughs Quotes
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One of the most graceful of warriors is the robin. I know few prettier sights than two males challenging and curveting about each other upon the grass in early spring. Their attentions to each other are so courteous and restrained.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Man takes root at his feet, and at best, he is no more than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird. He is the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she is sitting, he feeds her regularly.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Emerson stands apart from the other poets and essayists of New England, and of English literature generally, as of another order.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
We talk of communing with Nature, but ’tis with ourselves we commune.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
To regard the soul and body as one, or to ascribe to consciousness a physiological origin, is not detracting from its divinity; it is rather conferring divinity upon the body.
JOHN BURROUGHS -
Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.
JOHN BURROUGHS